Optical transceivers are generally used to transmit and receive optical signals in an optical communication system or network. Optical transceivers may transmit and receive optical signals at different wavelengths using wavelength divisional multiplexing (WDM) techniques. In a passive optical network (PON), for example, an optical networking unit (ONU) may include an optical transceiver transmitting optical signals at wavelengths in the C-band and receiving optical signals at wavelengths in the L-band. The optical transceiver contains the optical and electronic modules, components and sub-assemblies receive and transmit the optical signals and to convert between optical and electronic signals.
An optical transceiver may be coupled to an optical fiber for carrying the optical signals transmitted from and received by the transceiver. An optical transceiver may also include an internal optical fiber inside of the transceiver housing to facilitate optical coupling between optical sub-assemblies located within the transceiver. The optical fiber may be used, for example, to link transmitter and receiver sides of the transceiver.
In certain optical transceivers, however, the space within the transceiver housing is significantly limited. To comply with the small form-factor pluggable (SFP) transceiver standard, for example, the inside width of an SFP optical transceiver may be limited to about 10 mm. Using optical fiber within such a small space presents unique challenges. If the internal optical fiber is bent beyond a certain bending diameter, the optical fiber may be damaged and/or signal power may be lost, thereby adversely affecting performance. Although low bend loss optical fiber has been developed, bending the low bend loss optical fiber below a minimum bend diameter may still result in significant power loss.